Troubleshooting "Thumb Drive not Recognized" in Windows XP

You attach a USB-based device to a computer that is running Windows XP. Then, you try to scan for hardware devices. However, the computer does not detect the attached device, and you do not see the device in the My Computer folder. Does the problem look familiar to you? Well, it happens once a while with everyone.

To fix the issue, I would recommend the following plan of actions:

1. First, wait patiently a bit to ensure that the problem is not related to your computer being busy and dealing with other tasks.
2. If you have plugged this drive into a USB hub, it might point on the hub failure to perform due to the power out or simple malfunction. Try plugging the drive in directly to one of the USB ports in the front, or if that does not help, to the back of your computer.
3. Reboot the computer and try again plugging to the back.
4. Check the USB drive performance on another computer, and see if the problem associated with drive itself.
5. If the USB drive works fine on another PC, you can back to your initial host computer troubleshooting.
6. Go to Start->Settings->Control Panel->Administrative Tools->Disk Management with the drive in the computer and see if there is a drive letter associated with the thumb drive. If not, assign a drive letter.
7. Access the Device Manager and check if you see any signs of your drive there. Note that depending on the computer configuration, your USB drive might appear in different sections, like Disk Drives, DVD/CD-ROM drives, or Universal Serial Bus controls as USB Mass Storage.  If you do see if with yellow question mark, uninstall it. Then, scan for software changes, and see, if the drive will reappear as a healthy element of configuration.
8. Access the Device Manager and remove all the items, associated with USB such as USB root hub etc, than reboot the computer TWICE to let Windows to reinstall them properly, then try the flash drive again.
9. Next step is the registry modification related, so you should be careful, making any changes. The best way is playing safe, and making registry backup (by exporting registry into registry patch) before you do any changes.
1. Get into the Registry Editor - Press Start ->Run, type regedit in the window, and press Ok.
2. Click on My Computer. Then press File Export, assign easy recognizable file name to backup the registry.
3. Navigate to the following registry key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/SYSTEM/CurrentControlSet/Control/StorageDevicePolicies.
4. In the right pane select "writeprotect".
5. RESET the value to '0'.
6. Repeat the same for the registry keys ControlSet001 and ControlSet002, in case they exist.
7. Now plug in your USB drives and it should work. Else just reboot the machine and try.
10. The last step is also related to the registry changes, and is recommended by the Microsoft Knowledge Base, by deletng the UpperFilters registry value and the LowerFilters registry value. To do so, follow these steps:
1. Click Start, click Run, type regedit, and then click OK.
2. Locate and then click the UpperFilters registry value. This value is located in the following registry subkey: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{4D36E967-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}
3. On the Edit menu, click Delete, and then click OK.
   Note If you receive an error when you try to delete the registry subkey, you may not have appropriate permissions to edit the subkey.
4. Locate and then click the LowerFilters registry value. This value is located in the following registry subkey: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{4D36E967-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}
5. On the Edit menu, click Delete, and then click OK.
   Note If you receive an error when you try to delete the registry subkey, you may not have appropriate permissions to edit the subkey.
6. Exit Registry Editor.
7. Restart the computer.

How to set a fresh partition to USB Drive?

If the USB drive has a permanent recognition failure, and the data on the drive is not essential for you, you may just try creating a new partition. Definitely, if the drive has hardware failure, that would not be helpful. Follow the instructions:

• Go to the Start menu and then click on the Run option.
• Now type the command 'diskmgmt.msc' and then hit the Enter button.
• Locate the thumb drive in the lower part of the window that opens, and right-click on it.
• Now delete the partition on the thumb drive.
• Create a new partition by right-clicking on the thumb drive option. Format it in FAT or FAT32 format.
• Remove the thumb drive and reinsert it into the PC.

What can you do to prevent the USB corruption?

If you plug in a flash drive into Windows XP, it normally recognizes the flash drive and immediately sets up the flash drive for use as a regular storage device. When you need to disconnect the flash drive, use the “Safely Remove Hardware” icon and tell Windows that you want to remove the flash drive. Then, Windows will write any waiting data (Windows XP uses a delayed-write cache to speed up programs) and then tells itself that the drive is not connected. Finally, it tells you that the flash drive can now be removed. BUT, if you just pull the flash drive out without doing the Safely Remove Hardware step, you may lose the data that you thought was already written to the flash drive. Also, Windows won’t properly turn off its internal settings for the drive. That means, if you insert the drive again, Windows XP won’t recognize it. You need to reboot your computer to restore the flash drive recognition.

Instead of using Windows option, I personally prefer one of the free portable utilities EjectUSB, which will perform all the flash drive closure for me.

Source: http://webfreebies4u.blogspot.com/2011/03/10-practical-steps-of-troubleshooting.html